


Rubber Band

by sifuamelia



Series: Rewrite the Stars [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Awkward Flirting, Black Paladin Keith (Voltron), Blue Paladin Allura (Voltron), Developing Relationship, F/M, Flashbacks, Hopeful Ending, POV Allura (Voltron), Pillow & Blanket Forts, Post-Season/Series 02, Pre-Season/Series 03, Romantic Fluff, Shiro (Voltron) is Missing, Team Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 11:30:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11690730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sifuamelia/pseuds/sifuamelia
Summary: “What do you mean, you’ve never built a blanket fort before?”





	Rubber Band

_Stick in the mud._

She sits back up so that she can admire her handiwork. She can feel her eyes narrowing at the nonsensical scribbles spreading every which way around her dust-coated boots. Earth language is _hard_. Speaking it is easy enough, but the characters? The order that they go in? They don’t follow their own rules. They make as little sense as the swirling spiral of her mind, the dull ache in her heart.

_You’re such a stick in the mud, Princess. C’mon, just relax a little for once!_

_Leave her alone, Lance,_ she remembers him saying. He’d sounded tired. He always sounded a little tired. But even through the crackle of the intercom, his voice had been warm. And that was why she’d been grateful that he’d so easily leapt to her defense. She knows how to take care of herself. She isn’t her daddy’s little girl anymore — those days were long gone even before millenniums of years were stolen from her. She can take a punch or two.

She drops her stick back down into the mud, and she drops her head back down into her arms, which are crossed over her legs. Inside her little cave built atop bony knees and shrouded in piles and piles of starlight hair, things are dark and meaningless. It feels so good to sit like that, to see and hear nothing from the outside world for a few hidden moments.

He’s been gone for only a few days, but it feels like years and years. She’s imagined him walking through the front door, a face full of smile and arms spread wide, thousands of times. But each daydream always ends with him laughing, “Did you miss me?” And everybody would pile on top of him, laughing right back at him. But she’d hold back, because she knows that he’s tall enough to see her over all of their heads. And she knows that he’d send her a smile across the room, just for her, and it would make everything alright again—

“A-Allura?” The meaningless moment is gone. She snaps up, pushing her hair back out of her face with shaking hands.

“S-Sorry to bother,” Hunk says from behind her. He sounds so hesitant. He’s such a good person, so caring and kind and… Well. She doesn’t pick favorites, but—

“Dinner’s on the table.”

She straightens up. Turns around. Offers him a smile. “Thank you, Hunk. I’ll be right there.”

She hopes that that smile didn’t seem frozen in all of its meaninglessness as he bows his way off the front stoop of the Castle of Lions, leaving her alone in the world once more. She looks back down at her handiwork, etched into the dirt of some random planet that they’ve landed on for the night. Her handwriting has always been messy, and the Earth language makes it look even worse.

 _It’s not just one language, though,_ he’d explained to her. _There’re so many. We’re speaking English right now, but Lance comes from a place where they speak something called Spanish. It’s different, but there’re pretty clear similarities. Hunk, though, his family’s language is_ ** _very_** _different. And don’t even get me started on Japanese…_

How had that conversation even begun? She doesn’t remember. Like most of the things that they’d talked about together, it’d probably started from nowhere, but, as it was always with him, transcended into something comfortable, something inexplicably, _heartbreakingly_ easy, unlike any other routes of discussion that she'd ever experienced in her entire life, both before and after. Being a princess is hard; talking like a princess is a whole lot harder. She’d never felt like being around _him_ was hard. In fact, it’d always been the exact opposite.

She stands up, dusts herself off, and turns her back on the words that she'd been writing and a twin sunset that she knows that he would’ve loved. She needs to put on her brave face.

Dinner’s on the table.

 

* * *

 

_“What do you **mean** , you’ve never built a blanket fort before?”_

_“A fort made out of... blankets?” Allura could feel her nose wrinkling. “That doesn’t sound like a very strong fort.”_

_Shiro chuckled. “Not the point, Princess.”_

**_Princess._ ** _Her nose was still scrunched-up, but she could also feel it reddening._ _“You should teach me how to make one, then,” she responded. She’d meant it to sound light, playful, even, but it came out like a startling retort, defensive and demanding, and he looked somewhat taken aback._

_“Uh—“_

_“L-Later, that is!” It wasn’t just her nose that was red now; she could feel the blush creeping across her cheeks and down the back of her neck. “Not right now, clearly—“_

_“O-Of course—“_

_“Well, I’ll see you then—”_

_“S-Sure—“_

_“Have a lovely afternoon—“_

_“You, too—“_

_“Bye!”_

_As she stalked off toward her rooms, she wondered if Shiro’s eyes were following her down the hallway. The thought made her walk a bit faster. She needed to hide under her bed for a little while, where even the mice wouldn't be able to find her face on absolute fire._

 

* * *

 

“It may be difficult for us all to accept, but…” She clears her throat. Their eyes are following her every breath, but it isn’t their heavy gazes that are making her insides shrivel up and curl into themselves like the petals of a dying flower.

“Perhaps it is time to think about finding a new pilot for the Black Lion.” She’s shocked by her own acting skills — her voice doesn’t miss a single beat. Meanwhile, though, her entire heart is threatening to flop its way out of her chest and splash down onto the floor.

The chorus of voices rises up within them all, but she can’t do much else except stare straight into it. Her eyes find Keith’s first — Keith. _Poor, poor Keith._ She’d been awful to him, hadn’t she? But she’d thought them fixed. She’d really thought that they’d win the day, once and for all.

She can tell with absolute certainty that just a few days ago, Keith had thought the exact same thing. But now, his eyes, with their strange Galra-but-not-quite cast, are just as pained as she feels. Hunk may be her sweetheart, but Keith's her realist, and while she wishes that she could be more like the former, she knows that she's most like the latter. It's the realists who always know what needs to be done, and so it would be that mask that she would put on and wear to the best of her cracking ability.

She coughs, trying her hardest to make it sound as imperious as she possibly can. _Talk like_   _a princess,_ she tells herself.

They immediately stop clamoring and look to her, a success in the royalty handbook, she’s sure. Father would've been so proud. “We’ll discuss this further. In the meantime…” Her voice softens.

“I know it sounds impossible right now, but please, let’s try to get at least a few hours rest. It’s been a long day... and there are longer days ahead."

 

* * *

 

_“That’s… That’s more pillows than I’d initially expected.”_

_“Okay, so maybe the name’s a bit misleading.” Shiro gestured widely at his pile of supplies, pulled from what looked to be like every single bed and sofa and comfy surface in the castle, and her eyes immediately tracked the movement of his right arm, his alien arm. **Galra** arm, exposed beneath the short sleeves of his t-shirt. It made her want to cringe, but it was also oddly fascinating, the way it moved so smoothly, seamlessly, and blended perfectly into the tanned skin of his noticeably pronounced bicep—_

_“…and that's why it’s not just blankets.” He’d been saying something, and she’d missed it entirely, and he was giving her a strange look, so he’d probably noticed that she was staring—_

_**Crap,** she thought (she’d picked **that** one up from Pidge). “N-Noted,” was what she said aloud instead, as calmly as she could manage._  

 _He smiled at her, and it was enough to make her heart skip a beat. Shiro smiled at all of them. For goodness sake, he smiled at **everyone**! Smiling seemed to be his thing! _ _But sometimes, she wondered _—__

_"Let's get started, shall we?" he said, his grin outshining every single star passing by her window at the speed of light._

 

* * *

 

"It's you, Keith," she affirms, and everyone falls silent. "The Black Lion has chosen you as its Paladin."

Zarkon, Shiro... and now, Keith. All three were men on missions. Zarkon had betrayed everyone and everything. Keith was about to save their skins from Lotor's twisted machinations. And Shiro...

_Defenders of the universe, huh?_

"It is time to form Voltron."

They're off in a flash, and even she is, too. She'd always wanted to pilot a Lion! Even though she would've preferred Red, she's happy it's Blue.

But Blue isn't truly hers, just like Black isn't truly Keith's. Would Voltron even be able to stand up, let alone stand up to the Galra forces?

 _Of course it will,_ she reminds herself, thoughts harsh on other thoughts. _We're the defenders of the universe. It'll have to._

His voice, as it always is nowadays, is at the back of her mind as she slides into Blue's cockpit.

 _Has a nice ring to it,_ he says to her, his smile wider than the arc of an entire sun.

 

* * *

 

_"But the **real** trick," Shiro explained, "is in the rubber bands." And with a muted **fwip!** , one of Keith's hair ties neatly snapped the corner of a blanket into security around the leg of her desk chair. "Keeps everything nice and tight."_

_"Ah."_

_"An expert technique, passed down to me by my father, from his father, from his father—”_

_"Really?"_

_"Your turn." Allura looked up at him; he was trying to be serious, with dark eyes slightly narrowed, but she knew that it was all for show. Very carefully, avoiding as much contact as she could, she plucked another tie from his outstretched palm and grasped the free end of the blanket in her hand. They hadn't used her lamp yet, so she guided the blanket's edge to one of its exposed arms, curved like the branch of a tree (after all, it **was** authentic Olkari craftsmanship  _— fit for a princess_ )._

_"Nice!" He bumped her shoulder with his own, and she nearly fell over (although if she had, it wouldn't have been a result of the forceful impact). "A true blanket fort builder. Architect. Or maybe engineer?"_

_"I'll just stick to being a princess for now," she responded through an uncontrolled giggle. She wondered if she was imagining the tips of his ears turning pink._

_"Well, Princess, if the Castle of Lions ever spontaneously combusts, at least it's safe to say that you'll be able to build us a beautiful blanket palace as a temporary replacement."_

_"Only thanks to your expert technique!"_

_Shiro dipped into a ridiculous bow, and Allura laughed in his face. It wasn't a pretty laugh, and she immediately slapped a hand over her mouth..._

_...which made him laugh, too._ _"Not such a stick in the mud, huh?"  
_

_She frowned a little at that. "That seems to be up for debate."_

_He seemed to recognize the changing tone of their conversation. And for an unexpected second, he vanished beneath a dark blue blanket that belonged to Coran, a white puff of hair the only trace he left behind to prove that he was still there. But just as suddenly, he reappeared above the surface of the fort, holding out the little bag of hair ties._

_"On Earth, we call these things rubber bands. We don't just use them for ponytails. They're really resilient..." Shiro trailed off, his eyes meeting hers. They were far too gentle to help her keep her heart in control._

_"...and they can do pretty much anything."_

_"So when we make a pit stop on your planet, we should be sure to pick up lots of extras," she teased, her voice as light as she could make it._

_He rolled his eyes, just a little._

 

* * *

 

"Allura. Can you hear me?"

"Yes, Keith."

She hears him draw in a deep breath. "Shiro might've picked me to replace him as the leader of Voltron. And Black seems to have agreed to it, at least for the time being—”

"Right," she says shortly.

"But even though Shiro led us into the fight, you... Ultimately, he always deferred to you."

Her hands hover over one of Blue's dashboard joysticks.

"I might be the head of Voltron now, but just like Shiro said... you'll always be our princess."

"Are you two flirting?" a voice hollers scratchily in her helmet-covered ear. "Because if you two are flirting—”

"Oh, _c'mon_ , Lance!"

"You two should _definitely_ not be flirting—”

"And _you_ should _definitely_ stick your head up a Weeblum's—”

"Let's fight Lotor instead of each other, alright?" she shouts over the both of them. In the background, she can hear Pidge giggling. "After all, we _are_ the defenders of the universe."

"Yeah! Let's get this show on the road!" She can perfectly envision Hunk's fist pump, Pidge's look of battle-ready glee. And she can even hear the slightest of smiles in Keith's voice as he concludes it all for them with—

"Time to defend the universe."

 

* * *

 

_At some point, beneath the fading lights above the roof of the blanket fort, they'd begun delving into her childhood textbooks, lying on their stomachs as they perused page after page. Allura knew them back to front, but Shiro was eager to learn. Altean history wasn't terribly boring — her father had certainly done some interesting things — but by the time that they got to the revision of the second version of the third part of the Treatise on Balmera Crystal Retrieval, she could feel her eyes beginning to droop. Being surrounded on all sides by piles upon piles of pillows wasn't helping her cause — everything around her felt soft, and it was making her so very sleepy..._

_“Hey,” Shiro said, startling her slightly. He'd been so quiet, even as they'd pretended not to notice that they were both slowly but surely inching closer and closer together as she'd read aloud to him. Even now, they were but a breathing space apart._

_“Hey,” she said back._

_He shifted a little in the soft darkness, but Allura’s eyes were so heavy that she felt it rather than saw it._ _“Do you, uh…” A pause. “Do you want to go to sleep?”_

_Allura said nothing. She did want to go to sleep. But she also didn't._

_"I can leave—”_

_"No, stay."_ _The silence stretched away from her. She could practically feel him breathing._ _"That is, I mean… you know. Here. Uh.” Followed a little too quickly by, “I mean, you don’t have to, it’s just—“_

_“Sure,” Shiro finally said, although it sounded more like, “Shuuuhhh," because it was said through a massive yawn. “That sounds... nice. I won't have to get lost walking down all those hallways back to my room.”_

_Allura's heart skipped another beat. The silence stretched on, but she knew that she had to confirm their plans, so after he yawned again, she quickly added, "You can take my bed, I'll just stay in here. I really like it—”_

_“No,” Shiro mumbled._

_**No?** _

_“No. Just, just… c'mere. Come here, Allura.”_

_She looked up at that, not because of what it could mean, but because he hadn't called her "Princess." She could make out the tiniest rays of light that had pierced through the fuzzy surface of Coran's blanket, and they were filling Shiro's eyes with something that she'd seen there before but couldn't quite put a name to._

_"Okay," she said._ _She twisted her body upward into something that probably resembled a seated position, although she felt so dull and soft that she was pretty sure that she looked like a lumpy bowl of space goo. But Shiro didn't seem to care, because he, too, had sat up, and he was moving closer, and then closer still. She unintentionally bit her lip, and for a second, his eyes seemed to zero in on that movement before flitting their way back up to the rest of her face._

_“Allura,” Shiro whispered, but it sounded strangely loud to her, in the soft darkness of their blanket fort._

_“What?” she whispered back._

_A deep breath. Shiro was so close that the tips of his hair were tickling her upturned forehead._ _“Allura, I…” A light puff of air._ _“Allura, I really, **really** like you…”_

_She could feel her mouth rounding into the tiniest of O's, and Shiro must have seen it, because he was backing away almost as quickly as he'd come forward, his face reddening all the more obviously beneath the white stripe of his nose, but there was nothing that Allura wanted to do more than pull him back into her._

_**Why shouldn’t I?**  she suddenly thought. **What’s stopping me?**_

_"Shiro, can I kiss you?”_ _It hung in what little air was left between them, lightly hopeful, the last of what had been left inside her sleepy body._

_But Shiro said nothing._

_She sighed. She was too tired to run away. “I’m sorry, I should just—"_

_“Stop,” Shiro mumbled, and he reached out to her in the soft darkness. His fingers ended up making contact with her cheek, and the light touch was all it took to set her heart racing. “I… Yeah. I, uh. Think that’s probably, uh. A good idea.”_

_His hair was just as soft as she'd imagined it — fine, silky soft. It was easy to untangle her fingers from, but that was okay with her, because there were other things that she thought could be much more tangle-able _—__

_They fell together. And suddenly, she was wide awake._

 

* * *

 

 _I'm going to see you again,_ she thinks as they fly, finally united in their new seats, into the face of the challenger. _I have no doubts._ _But for now, I'll be resilient. I'll snap things into place._ _For the universe, for all of us, for **you**..._

_I'll be a rubber band._

**Author's Note:**

> So corny. So dumb. I miss Shiro so much. (I bet Allura misses him more.) Please come back, Shiro. You're my everything.


End file.
